Symbols

 

As a writer I know symbols are important to enrich a story, although one of my editors has been known to compliment me on a symbol, I had not put in intentionally.

Likewise symbols can be important in real life, but we may not think about them on a conscious level.

Merriman Webster defines symbol as "something that stands for or suggests something else by reason of relationship, association, convention, or accidental resemblance especially : a visible sign of something invisible."

The broach in the photo is a symbol of all that and more. Although I never saw the broach until a few months ago, it contains memories.

When my ex and I were stationed at Kelley Barracks in Stuttgart, we were friends with another couple. He was American, she was German. She and I became friends. As two couples we went to Italy and did fun things that couple friends do.

Back in the States we visited them in D.C., Florida and Colorado as they moved around. Their daughter potty trained my daughter mainly because my daughter thought if the other child could, she could.

We lost track of each other. I called everybody by their too-common name in Arizona where I'd thought they moved with no luck. What I didn't know they had moved to Oregon. 

Many years later they contacted me on Facebook. We met up in Nice where they'd docked on a world cruise. It was if were back at Kelley Barracks, even if I had a different husband with me.

Sadly, she passed on. 

I received some things she wanted me to have, including the broach. 

Not any broach. It was one his first gifts to her, bought in the Kelley Barracks PX where I shopped too.

This broach is a symbol: of our youth, of their love, of our friendship. I cannot put it on without memories of her, the things we did, the things we laughed at, the things that frightened us. I see us sitting in her room talking. I see us freezing on a beach pretending to our husbands that we are really warm enough after making them drive a couple of hours to the beach. I see her showing me the Continental Divide. I see us in a camper in the Rockies. I see us playing Mikado and cards. I see her giving me my first artichoke. I see us talking about trash mashers and microwaves. 

I could write paragraphs if not a good-sized book about all the memories. That's a lot of symbolizing to put into one little broach, but it all there.